I love this simple, interactive guide to the Harvard Referencing System as if has every eventuality clearly covered - a bit late now to get to it 30 months AFTER I started my Masters with The OU!
I had to get this right
McCall, M., Eichinger, R.W and Lombardo, M.M., 1996 The Career Architect Development Planner, 3rd edition (The Leadership Architect Suite).
From this:
Source: M. McCall, R. Eichinger & M. Lombardo, Princeton's Center for Creative Leadership
I'd even give a link:
I've come far in 2 1/2 years and the OU online platforms have advanced too, but is it possible to do a module, H810, which is entirely online - without a laptop or desktop computer? What will or will not work if I try to make do with an iPad? We will see ... or after a few days I'll be scrounging around for a PC. My wife says she might get a laptop with a new smartphone she needs!?
And in this context, how suitable are the various assistive technologies? From software to hardware, screen readers to tracker balls?
Call for design based on educational theory. How can technologies be used to afford specific learning advantages?
SHIFT From information to communication From passive to interactive With engagement and from individual learners to socially situative learning
Littlejohn et al (L2455)
Littlejohn, A., Falconer,I and McGill,L. ( ) Characterising effective eLearning resources'. Education
Towards new technical architectures and a service-orientated approach vs. instructivist focus on single leaners accessing content.
Unit of learning (Britain, 2004)
Importance of educational vocabularies. Currier et al (2006) L2476
Currier,S. Campbell, L. Beetham, H. (2006) JISC pedagogical vocabularies report project. Pedagogical vocals.
Laurillard (1993) six types of learning
(Scaffolding)
The term previously known as 'natural language keyword indexing' = tagging not wiki.
Tasks to learning outcomes.
Subject, level of difficulty, intended learning outcomes, environment.
Content
Cognitive, effective, psycho-motor and able to understand, demo, produce or appraise. Bloom (1956)
Components of learning activity L2509
Context Pedagogy – associative, cognitive, situative.
Tasks Assessment – diagnostic, formative, summative.
Mediating artefacts. (Conole, 2002)
Media components
Interactivities
E–tivities (Implies Web 2.0)
Laurillard (1993) manipulation presentation analysis searching managing communicating visualising supporting evaluating adaptation
Mediating artefacts:
Narratives and case studies – engaging but specific so not reusable; peer dialogue.
Lesson plans Templates and wizards Toolkits Models and patterns e.g. Kolb (1984)
Reuse of mediating artifacts (Littlejohn, 2003)
Little use of generic resources (Beetham, 2004)
I would have found this invalauble commencing any of the Masters in Open and Distance Education Modules.
Gange’s model of instructional design
· Conditions of learning:
· Internal conditions deal with what the learner knows to prior to the instruction.
· External conditions deal with the stimuli that are presented to the learner
FIVE STEPS
FIRST STEP
Kind of outcomes to be achieved
Five types:
1. Verbal Information
2. Intellectual Skills
3. Cognitive Strategies
4. Attitudes
5. Motor Skills
SECOND STEP
Organise appropriate instructional events.
Gagne’s events of instruction:
1. Gaining attention
2. Informing the learner of the objective
3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
4. Presenting the stimulus material
5. Providing learning guidance
6. Eliciting the performance
7. Providing feedback
8. Assessing the performance
9. Enhancing retention and transfer
Khadjoo. et al (2011:117)
In relation to teaching psychomotor skills:
Gaining attention
· Capture attention and arouse interest
· An abrupt stimulus
· A thought-provoking question
· Visual or sound stimulus (or multimedia)
Informing the learner of the objective
· Set learning objective
· Expectancy and motivation
· Identify, prepare, understand, perform and understand.
Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
Associating new information with prior knowledge and personal experience and getting the learners to think about what they already know to facilitate the learning process. Khadjoo. et al (2011:117)
· Interactive discussion
· Ask questions, consider findings and confirm evidence.
Presenting the stimulus material
· New content presented
· Meaningful organisation
· Explanation and demonstration
· How to, position, monitor, test …
Khadjoo. et al (2011:118)
Providing learning guidance
· Correct performance
· Additional suggestions
· Use of examples (case studies)
· Graphical representations, mnemonics, add meaning …
Eliciting the performance
· The learner practices the new skill or behaviour.
· Confirmation of understanding
· Repetition to increase retention
Providing feedback
· Individual and immediate feedback and guidance
· Questioned answer
· Feedback from other learners
Assessing the performance
· Demonstration of what they have learned (no additional coaching or hints)
· Additional practice required
Enhancing retention and transfer
· Practice (Before, during and after)
· Spaced reviews
· Transfer of knowledge to new problems
· Practice, rest and repeat
· Consider:
o Objectives
o Setting
o Time
o Available resources
o Institutional constraints
o Content
o Number of learners (their characteristics and preferences)
REFERENCE
Gagne, R, Briggs L, Wager W, eds. (1998) Principles of instructional design. 3rd edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Khajoii, K, Rostami.K. How to use Gagne’s model of instructional design in teaching psychomotor skills. Gatroenterology and Hepatology. 4(3) 116-119
Mind map based on two key chapters from 'Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age' by Helen Beetham and Rhona Sharpe.
Click on the image for the Picasa Gallery and download. Created using the iPad APP 'Simple Minds'.
Why does the OU put the novice and expert together in the MAODE?
Although I praise this approach and after two years have been a beneficiary I wonder if the research points to the need for greater flexibility and mixing, more akin to several cohorts of students being able to move around, between their own tutor group, contributing to discussions with the newcomers while also being able to hobnob with the experts?
The learning theory that I am coming to understand does not favour a fixed approach.
It isn't simply a case of playing to the individual, though this is certainly very important as some people will favour being the teacher or the taught, or simply relish periods when they sit at the feet of the expert or stand up in front of newcomers. Rather it is apparent that people learn well within a peer group of like-minds, with people at a similar stage to themselves while having planned opportunities to hear and participate with 'great minds' while also from time to time contributing to the efforts and feeding off the enthusiasms of the 'new minds'.
Nothing is fixed, neither learning vicariously (Cox, 2006), or learning from the periphery to the centre (Seely Brown and Duguid, 1999).
Stage one of my approach to reading these days is to highlight, even share quotes and notes on Twitter as I go through a book.
I then type up my notes and add further thoughts either by cutting and pasting from the aggregates notes in my Twitter feed (eBooks don't allow you to cut and paste) or from handwritten notes I take on cards.
Then I share my notes here, tagged so that I can revisit and others can draw on my notes too or take the hint and read the chapter or book for themselves.
This too is but a stage - next step is to wrap up my developing thoughts, comments and other conversations and put a version of this entry into my external blog my mind bursts.
Sometimes an exchange here or elsewhere develops my thinking further - today I will be sitting down with a senior learning designer, one of five or six in the office of an international e-learning agency to talk learning theory and educational principles.
Chapter 2
Regarding Quality Assurance - there should be no inconsistencies between:
So align assumptions:
N.B. Each outcome requires a different kind of theoretical perspective and a different pedagogical approach. L757
(Easy to say in theory, not so easy to deliver in practice?)
Three clusters of broad perspectives:
Associationist: gradual building of patterns of associations and skill components. Therefore activity followed by feedback.
Simple tasks prerequisites to more complex.
Gagné (1985 and 1992)
Instructional Systems Design
Then add:
Behaviourism: active learning by design. Immediate feedback on success, careful analysis of learning outcomes, alignment of learning objectives.
The Cognitive Perspective
Knowledge acquisition as the outcome of an interaction between new experiences and the structures for understanding that have already been created. Therefore building a framework for learning vs. learning as the strengthening of associations.
Piaget (1970) Constructivist Theory of Knowledge.
‘Conceptual development occurs through intellectual activity rather than by the absorption of information'. L819
Vygotsky (1928:1931) Importance of social interaction.
Interactions – that e-learning teams call ‘interactivities’.
The Situative Perspective
(problem-based learning and cognitive apprenticeship). L862
The concept of community practice
Wenger (1998) identify as a learner derived from the community. (Aspires, defines, accredited).
Mayes et al (2001) learning through relating to others. E.g. Master Class
Social-anthropological belonging to the community. L882.
Beliefs, attitudes, common endeavour, also ‘activity systems’ Engestrom 1993
Learning relationships
Identify, participate, individual relations. Dependent on: context, characteristics and strength of relationships in the group (Fowler and Mayes, 1999) L902
What was exotic in 2007 in common place today?
See Appendix 1 L912
Learning as a cycle through stages.
If ‘as it proceeds from service to expert, the nature of learning changes profoundly and the pedagogy based on one stage will be inappropriate for another’. L923
Fowler and Mayes (1999)
Primary: preventing information
Secondary: active learning and feedback
Tertiary: dialogue and new learning.
REFERENCE
Beetham, H and Sharpe, R. (2007) Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and delivering e-learning.
Cole, M and Engestrom, Y (1993) A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G.Salmon (ed.) Distributed cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, New York, CVP.
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Gagné, R (1985) The conditions of learning. New York. Holt, Rhinehart and Wilson.
Jonassen, D.H. and Rohrer-Murphy, L (1999) ‘Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments’. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47 (1) 61-80
Seely-Brown, J.S and Duguid, P. (1991) ‘Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation’, Organizational Science, 2 (1): 40-57
An introduction to rethinking pedagogy for a digital age
Beetham and Sharp
This is my third, possibly my fourth read of the book Rethinking Pedagogy for a digital age. Now that I am in the thick of it working on quality assurance and testing for corporate online learning it has enormous relevance and resonance.
Reading this I wonder why the OU changed the MAODL to MAODE? Around 2000-2003? From the Masters in Open and Distance Learning to the Masters in Open and Distance Education.
Beetham and Sharpe have much to say about the relevance or otherwise of pedagogy and its teaching bias.
Pedagogy = the science of teaching not the activity of learning. (L460: Kindle Reference)
The term ‘teaching; denies the active nature of learning an individuals’ unique capacities to learn (Alexander, 2002) L477
How does e-learning cater for the fact the learners differ from one another in the way that they learn? L477
Guiding others to learn is a unique, skilful, creative and demanding human activity that deserves scholarship in its own right. L477
This quote is relevant to H807 Innovations in e-learning and other MAODE modules:
'Papyrus and paper chalk and print, overhead projectors, educational toys and television, even the basics technologies of writing were innovations once'. L518
I like this too:
The networked digital computer and its more recent mobile and wireless counterparts are just the latent outcomes of human ingenuity that we have at our disposal. L518
Designed for:
Are there universal patterns of learning or not?
Pedagogical Thought
Constructivism – Jonassen et al 1999
Social Constructions – Vygotsky 1986
Activity Theory – Engeström et al 1999
Experiational Learning – Kolb 1984
Instructional Design – Gagné et al 2004
Networked and collaborative work – McConnell 2000
Learning Design Jochems et al 2004
I was wondering whether, just as in a story, film or novel requires a theme, so learning asnd especially e-learning, according to Mayes and de Frietas ‘needs to be based on clear theoretical principles.
E-enhancements of existing models of learning.
Technology enables underlying processes common to all learning.
Cf Biggs 1999 Constructivist L737
Teaching for Quality Learning at University Buckingham SRHE OUP
So how does this apply to learning? What is best face–to–face or at a distance, synchronous or asynchronous? The answer I understand is all of these, that interaction by whatever means available helps the learning process compared to working alone. You can think it through with a.n.other; you can share doubts and admit that yiu don't 'get' the most trivial things and have it explained or expressed by somoene that at last makes sense.
'Get it from Nellie' is the expression I got from an 85 year old at the weekend, a long retired senior partrner from PriceWaterhouse. He believes in trainees, in the apprentice, the articled clerk, the junior picking it up from the senior. So simple, so obvious, yet where does this occur in education? I've only come across it between partners where one is a couple of years ahead of the other on an MBA programme and can give all kinds of guidance. We don't see A level students helping those at GCSE, or one year group helping another as undergraduates. The system of a qualified PhD as lecturer or supervisor follows this model though. I found it worked a bit a primary school too with 10 and 11 year olds helping out with the youngest. Is there something of the extended family in this? Is there something of a more traditional, manageable community too of elders and others?
Social learning is about sharing, passing on and explaining. It should be less about indoctrination though, to what degree they can in Germany prevent by law any kind of religious upbringing until the young person has a say or thought on the matter is another things – you bring them up as agnostics or atheaists and that is what they'll be.
There's the need therefore to 'get it out' to express your ideas, to state where you are at, to be corrected or believed, vindicated or shot down. Knowledge doesn't simply aggregate like coral, rather it feeds on the vibrancy of responses from others.
Successfully registered and signed up for H810: accessibility - starting September with a January finish. This will complete my first, extraordinary OU Journey after three years.
Intellectually challenging, rigorous, comprehensive, expansive and life transforming. It took a while but I am now working for a world leader creating e-learning resources for companies - manager training for the most part.
It won't end here. I have my eye on a History MA. I've discussed this with student services. Starting September 2013 in two parts this will take me into the Centenerary of that horror, the 'war to end war' (HGWells) 1914-1918 that I blog about at www.machineguncorps.com
History would have been my first degree decades ago had I not got cold feet and switched to Geography. And an MA in Fine Art (which had been on the cards in 2010 when I elected for the MAODE.
I guess that's the next decad taken care of!
Looks right
Works
Stands up to cost-benefit analysis
This is from a book that came as the box of resources in 2001 when the MAODE was called a MAODL and the term 'e-learning' hadn't come into common usage - we called it 'online learning', or 'web-based learning' and in practice meant 'migrating content to the Web' which as an interactive DVD would typically fail to upload or play thus for a decade web-based learning was a poorer cousin of the bespoke DVD with 3D animations and oodles of specially commissioned video.
Indulgent Learning
There are all kinds of words for this and I'd like to find one that is non-commital. The OU calls it 'recreational learning' for those doing it, what, 'for a bit of a laugh', and if as an indulgence, so what - it's their money. There are many shades of 'indulgence' which has to include at one end of the spectrum 'inspired' - the person who learns with such passion and obsession that it may appear to some as indulgent but because the person is motivated serendipty may take this indulgence into a career (or at least a life-style). In any case, what's wrong with learning? Surely watching TV passively is more indulgent, or learning to become an expert at a game?
Aspirational Learning
Here the person aspires to be (dangerous), or to do (better) something and requires (professions) or understands it would be useful to have and to demonstrate a skill or knowledge. The motivation may be extrinsic, but he desire to get on, to secure work you feel informed about or even enjoy is a healthy aspiration.
Applied Learning
Perhaps this follows on from these first two - if you turn professional or get them job then further learning on the subject that is your work has the benefit of being applied, it develops your confidence, raises your skills, allows you to take on new challenges.
Compulsory Learning
Not necessarily the worst form, I have to look at elements of military training in time of war or conflict and whether compulsory or not they serve a practical purpose - kill or be killed (or in current parlance, 'keep the peace'). For a student at school to feel the subject they are studying is compulsory the motivation is slight, no love for it, that intrinsic fire has been put out. The extrinsic motivation - the cane or class prize may work for some.
I only came up with a set of descriptors of my own as I read 'Preparing for blended learning' Pegler (2009) for the third time in a wholy different setting than when I read it first as a returning student of e-learning two years ago unsure if I'd find my way into an e-learning role, a year ago when I found myself at the hub of distance and e-learning, The OU, (though not in an e-learning role) and now two and half years on, where I started this journey over a decade ago - in Brighton in one of the many leading, international e-learning companies where modules are created for multinationals, blue chips, Fortune 100, FTSE 100 and Governmente Departments.
I feel like a child who has spent years learning a foreign language and this week went to a country where the language is the mother tongue (I'm getting this from a daughter who has done three years of Spanish and finally made it to Madrid last week and overnight wants to make it an A' Level choice). I know the language of e-learning. I can, understandably, 'talk the talk.
Now I get to see how to do it effectively, winning the trust of clients, collaborating with an array of skilled colleagues to take an idea, or problem or objective, and create something that works and can be scrutinised in a way that is rarely done at academic levels for effectiveness - a pass isn't good enough, for some 'modules' 100% compliance is required. Do you want people running nuclear power stations, our trains ... or banks (ahem) to get it wrong?
Turning back to the books then I am going to spend the rest of the week looking out for some of the following. I imagine the practised learning designers have the outcomes in the back of their mind rather than the descriptors given here. Across the projects I am working on I want to see how many of the following I can spot. And like learning a language (I eventually cracked French and recall this phenonmenon) the fog will slowly clear and it will come fluently.
Laurillard's Conversational Model (2001).
1. Assimilative: mapping, Brainstorming, Buzzwords, Crosswords, Defining, Mind maps, Web search Adaptive. Process narrative information (reading books, e–books, attending talks, lectures and classroom teaching, watching a video or TV, including YouTube listening to the radio or a podcast). Then manage this information by taking notes (which may be blogged or managed in an e–portfolio or any old-fashioned exercise book or arch–level file).
2. Adaptive: Modelling. Where the learning environment changes based in the learner's actions, such as simulations or computer games.
3. Communicative: reasoning, Arguing, Coaching, Debate, Discussion, Fishbowl, lce-breaker, Interview, Negotiation, On-the-spot questioning, Pair dialogues, Panel discussion, Peer exchange, Performance, Question and answer, Rounds, Scaffolding, Socratic instruction, Short answer, Snowball, Structured debate, discussion, ice–breaker, debate face–to–face or online (and therefore synchronous and asynchronous)
4. Productive: Assignment, Book report, Dissertation/thesis, Drill and practice, Essay, Exercise, Journaling, Presentation, Literature review, Multi-choice questions, Puzzles, Portfolio, Product, Report/paper, Test, Voting, creating something, from an essay to a blog, a written paper in an exam and sundry diagrams, drawings, video, sculptures. Whatever is produced as an outcome from the learning activity? (Increasingly created online to share on a platform: blog, audio podcast, animation, photo gallery, video and any combination or 'mash–up' of these).
5. Experiential: study, Experiment, Field trip, Game, Role play, Scavenger hunt, Simulation, interactive problem solving from a field trip to a role–play. Creative Problem Solving techniques might include Heroes, Human Sculpture, and Time Line).
REFERENCE
Pegler, C (2009). Preparing for Blended e-Learning (Connecting with E-learning) (Kindle Locations 2442-2444). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
Conole, G (2007) ‘Describing learning activities and tools and resources to guide practice’, in H. Beetham and R. Sharpe (eds) Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and Delivering e-Learning, London: Routledge, (reformatted)
I read this last in 2001; I was on the Masters in Open & Distance Learning (as it was then called).
Whilst there are hints at e-learning the closest this gets to interactive learning is the video-disc and the potential for CD-Rom. Actually, there was by then a developed and successful corporate training DVD business. In 2001 the OU sent out a box of resources at the start of the course. 16 books and a pack of floppy discs I recall to loud 'ListServe' or some such early online collaboration tool.
The nature of evaluation
Evaluation Stages
There's an approach to everything. When it comes to evaluation it helps to be systematic. At what point does your approach to evaluation becoming overly complex though? Once again, think of the time and effort, the resources and cost, the skill of the person undertaking the evaluation and so on. Coming from a TV background my old producer used the expression 'pay peanuts and you get monkeys': skill and experience has a price. Evaluation or assessment, of the course and of the student (in the UK), of the student in the US.
Improvement as a result of evaluation (Kogan 1989):
The idea of summative versus formative evaluation i.e. the value of the course to achieve a task vs. aspects of the course that can be addressed and revised.
Anthropological vs. 'agricultural-botanical'.
Illuminate evaluation. People are not plants. An anthropological approach is required: Observe, interview, analyse, the rationale and evolution of the programme, its operations achievements and difficulties within the 'learning milieu'. Partlett & Hamilton (1972)
CIPP (Stufflebeam et al 1971) evaluation by:
CONTEXT: Descriptive data, objectives, intended outcomes (learning objectives)
INPUT: Strategy
PROCESS: Implementation
PRODUCT: Summative evaluation (measured success or otherwise)
UTILIZATION: None, passive and active.
CONCLUSION
There are other ways to quote from this chapter:
Does the ease at which we can clip and share diminish the learning experience? Where lies the value of taking notes from a teacher and carefully copying up any diagrams they do? These notes the basis for homework (an essay or test, with an end of term, end of year then end of module exam as the final test?)
GLOSSARY
REFERENCE
Daniel, J (1989) 'The worlds of open learning', in: Pained, N (ed) open Learning in Transition, London. Kogan Page.
Partlett, M and Hamilton, D (1981) 'Evaluation as illumination: a new approach to the study of innovatory programmes. Originally published as a paper 1972 for University of Edinburgh Centre for Research in the Educational Sciences. in: Partlet, M and Dearden, G (eds), Introduction to Illuminative Evaluation: Studies in Higher Education, SRHE, University of Surrey, Guilford.
E807 Children and young people's worlds: frameworks for integrated practice
or
H810 Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students
If you have done either let me know what you think.
I've registered for both so am commited to the 'End Game' one way or another.
Whenever I stumbleupon I new tool I like to give it a shot and the first thing that comes to mind is my 'learning environment' or some such. All I initially wanted was a simple Venn Diagram creating tool (I tested several of those). This, iDesk, does some much, exploits the multi-touch surface of an iPad and is great fun and versatile.
'Subjects' and 'Art History' have vanished under 'writing'.
A shifting thing where clients call the shots when freelance work takes precedence.
The Open University provide an OU Student Blog platform, which you are required to use for some modules to build up reflective practice, they also provide a portfolio called MyStuff in which to dump stuff.
As portfolios either system can be used to aggregate content that can be shared, offered with restricted access or kept private.
I have been on the Masters in Open & Distance Education for two years, we have to give blogs, potfolios, wikis and other tools a go.
My conclusion, shared amongst fellow students, is that the 'modern' blog platform, such as Wordpress offers all of this, as in a wonderfully simple, bulletin board kind of way the OU's own blog offering.
The Holy Trinity of learning.
2 years and 4 months it has taken me on a Masters programme called 'Open & Distance Learning' to realise that this is what it takes for a person to gain knowledge. Of these three, I'd put motivation first, and put intrinsic motivation above extrinsic.
If you want to learn you will and can. Does it help to have a classroom? A library? Some books? Do you need a computer, or smartphone, or laptop?
You need a teacher. Present is best, small groups or one to one. A teacher who motivates.
I stumbleupon a bix of bits and pieces that my father had kept (he died a decade ago) and found a couple of my school reports from when I was ten; and some old school photos. I've been online remembering school with half a dozen old classmates from when I was 4.11 to 16.
An unpleasant experience with a teacher killed a subject, while a positive experience and even where I didn't excel I was happy and got good reports. A subject I may have enjoyed and came to via the back door by going to live there, French.
Where is the teacher in e-learning?
In the instructional design and the team of content cretors, in the way software recognises and rewards, in the vital involvement of an e- moderator, who like the 'good teacher' know how and where to step in to initiate, to support, encourage, encourage and motivate.
Funny that this should come to me during the vacuum of a Bank holiday. (or not so funny, the last module I did 'creativity, innovation and change B822 gave me the green light to empty my head, go for walks even to dream on it. Which of course I did last night, bobbing around in a world of classes).
There is a paper I am picking my way through too, from ALT- C 2007 and some papers from the Institute of aeducation I am glancing at, so I've hardly stopped feeding my mind.
Effort and Time speak for themselves
I'm not suggesting that everyone can get A grades, there is more at play. The effort benefits fromguidance. Consistency is required too, and not always in a person's mindset. Either way, for anyone, it takes time. The day (or night) will never come where you can go to sleep wearjng a headset and wake up after an 8 hour mind dump and 'know stuff') But then again, who ever thought a driverless car would become feasible?
Mindmap on Digital Scholarship
drawing on ideas from 'The Digital Scholar' Martin Weller,
'Blended E-learning' Chris Pegler
and my own OU and e-learning blogs
Brightwave's e-learning production process
Great to have a few months between modules as it gives me the opportunity to look beyond the MAODE modules at what interests me most: learnign and development in a corporate setting, the practicalities of enhancing the skills and building on the motivations and interests of people in their daily working lives.
The above chart adds detail to a familiar productoin process.
The benefit of turning to an outside supplier for such services (and for the the supplier to call upon the specialist skills of freelancers), is the accountability, the clarity of the stages, the parameters set by budgets and schedules and the lack of politics, as well as the engagement with a diversity of cultures, experiences and background which you simply do no get when everything is carried out in-house, the biggest bugbear of most providers in the the tertiary sector who insist on doing it all themselves.
Particularly impressed with Laura Overton who I have heard speak at Learning Technologies in the past.
Brightwave, quite rightly, include a transcript with these face paced, tightly edited, packed interviews.
This doesn't preclude the benefit of taking notes. I also cut and paste the transcript then go through highlighting, re-arranging the text and doing what Jakob Neilsen would call making it 'web friendly'.
Even if I don't share this online, the act of doing this is a vital way to engage and memorise the information.
I've come to understand in the last few days (B822 End of Module Exam) that a 'mnemonic' is any devise or technique that aids memory, so reading this start the mylenations process, comment and those tracks become established. Cut and paste, doing something of your own with the content, go follow the links, add links of your own, cut and paste into a blog (here or externally), then share it into Facebook or Twitter and pick up others who know more or less and can contribute.
All of this is a very human way og aggregating and securing knowledge.
Ideally everyone would be milling around my garden right now, we'd pick up the conversation, then drift away to other things.
‘What is the library, when the totality of experience approaches that which can be remembered?’ (Rausing, 2011:52)
Speaking at the Nobel Symposium 'Going Digital' in June 2009 (that ironically took another 2 years before it was published0.
Things are gong to have to speed up in the new age of digital academia and the digital scholar.
We have more than a university in our pockets (an OU course), we have a library of million of books.
(I have an iPhone and iPad. I 'borrow' time on laptops on desktops around the house, libraries at work).
I’ve often pondered from a story telling point of view what it would be like to digitize not the libraries of the world, but something far more complex, the entire contents of someone’s mind. (The Contents of My Mind: a screenplay) It is fast becoming feasible to pull together a substantial part of all that a person may have read and written in their lifetime. (TCMB.COM a website I launched in 2001)
‘Throughout history, libraries have depended on destruction’. (Rausing, 2011:50)
But like taking a calculator into a maths exam, or having books with you as a resource, it isn’t that all this ‘stuff’ is online, it is that the precise piece of information, memory support or elaboration, is now not on the tip of your tongue, but at your fingertips.
Rausing (2011) wonders about the creation of a New library of Alexandria. I wonder if we ought not to be looking for better metaphors.
‘How do we understand the web, when this also means grasping its quasi-biological whole?’ (Rausing, 2011:53)
Tim Berners-Lee thinks of Web 2.0 as a biological form; others have likeminds. But what kind of growth, like an invasive weed circling the globe?
There are many questions. In this respect Rausing is right, and it is appropriate for the web too. We should be asking each other questons.
‘Do we have the imagination and generosity to collaborate? Can we build legal, organisational and financial structures that will preserve, and order, and also share and disseminate, the learning and cultures of the world? Scholars have traditionally gated and protected knowledge, but also shared and distributed it, in libraries, schools and universities. Time and again they have stood for a republic of learning that is wider than the ivory tower. Now is the time to do so again’. (Rausing, 2011:49)
If everything is readily available then the economy of scarcity, as hit the music industry and is fast impacting on movies, applies to books and journals too.
It seems archaic to read the copyright restrictions on this Nobel Symposium set of papers and remarkable to read that one of its authors won’t see their own PhD thesis published until 2020.
‘The academic databases have at least entered the digital realm. Public access – the right to roam – is a press-of-the-button away. But academic monographs, although produced by digitised means, are then, in what is arguably an act of collective academic madness, turned into non-searchable paper products. Moreover, both academic articles and monographs are kept from the public domain for the author’s lifetime plus seventy years. My own PhD dissertation,19 published in 1999, will come into the public domain in about 110 years, around 2120’. (Rausing, 2011:55)
The e-hoarder, the obsessive scanning of stuff. My diaries in my teens got out of hand, I have a month of sweet wrappers and bus tickets, of theatre flyers and shopping lists. All from 1978. Of interest perhaps only because 10,000 teeneragers in the 1970s weren’t doing the same in England at the time.
‘We want ephemera: pamphlet literature, theatre bills, immigrant broad sheets and poetry workshops’. (Rausing, 2011:51)
What then when we can store and collate everything we read? When our thoughts, not just or writings are tagged and shared? Will we become lost in the crowd?
‘What if our next “peasant poet,” as John Clare was known, twitters? What if he writes a blog or a shojo manga? What if he publishes via a desktop, or a vanity publisher? Will his output count as part of legal deposit material?’ (Rausing, 2011:52)
The extraordinary complex human nature will not be diminished; we are what we were 5000 years ago. It will enable some, disable others; be matter of fact or of no significance, a worry or not, in equal measure.
A recent Financial Times article agrees with Robert Darnton, warning that by means of the Books Rights Registry, Google and the publishing industry have created “an effective cartel,” with “significant barriers to entry.” (Rausing, 2011:57)
Much to ponder.
‘If scholars continue to hide away and lock up their knowledge, do they not risk their own irrelevance?’ (Rausing, 2011:61)
GLOSSARY
Allemansratt : Freedom to roam
The Cloud : A Simple Storage Service that has some 52 billion virtual objects.
Folkbildningsidealet: A "profoundly democratic vision of universal learning and education"?
Incunabula: "Incunabula" is a generic term coined by English book collectors in the seventeenth century to describe the first printed books of the fifteenth century. It is a more elegant replacement for what had previously been called "fifteeners", and is formed of two Latin words meaning literally "in the cradle" or "in swaddling clothes"
Maimonedes : His philosophic masterpiece, the Guide of the Perplexed, is a sustained treatment of Jewish thought and practice that seeks to resolve the conflict between religious knowledge and secular.
Meisterstuecke : German for masterpiece.
Samizdat : An underground publishing system used to print and circulate banned literature clandestinely.
Schatzkammer : ‘Treasure Room’, and in English, for the collection of treasures, kept in a secure room, often in the basement of a palace or castle.
REFERENCE
Ruasing, L(2011) (Last accessed 23rd May 2012) http://www.center.kva.se/svenska/forskning/NS147Abstracts/KVA_Going_Digital_webb.pdf )
Evolutionary and revolutionary aspects of digitization
(147th Nobel Symposium June 23-26, 2009. Published 2011)
‘A three day discussion on the future of memory’. (Baker, 2011)
What is evolutionary or revolutionary when going digital today?
The Pre-digital world. How did we manage?
· Where did this come from?
· Access
· What does it mean?
· How academics use it
· Adding value for research
· Where is it all leading to?
Videos available here
Putting together the best speakers:
· Professor Emma Rothschild, Harvard.
· Dr Lisbet Rausing, Imperial College, London
· Professor Marco Beretta, Bologna/Florence
· Martin Rosenbroek, National Library, The Netherlands
Going Digital. Another memory aid in a 5,000 year history. A must read for anyone on MAODE, especially H800 and H807
For the last 26 months my OU studying has had me pointed in a direction (even if it wasn't always clear which port I was headed for I was at least at sea and in motion).
I've been blown along by the regular requirements of activities and assessments (I need the regular drip drip of weekly activities far more than an assignment every sixth week or an exam after five months).
Time to get the paddles out (if I can find them).
Or I come ashore?
The next module I'm interested in doesn't start 'til February 2013!
The module ended 10 days ago so what am I doing having a dream about the thing? And given the course, 'Creativity, Innovation & Change' then once again, despite my best efforts, I can share with you that 'Working with Dreams' is a tricky one for the office.
The dream was about collaboration, not in teams, but in partnership. I'm re-reading the Walter Isaacson biography and tossing notes onto Twitter and Facebook.
My thoughts dwelt on the nature of close collaboration, how likeminds may be LESS useful than minds where there is conflict. The key is to have a common goal, indeed, very different 'personalities' by type, experience, background, response are beneficial so long as the 'GOAL' is a significant motivation that overrides everything else.
For anyone caring to join in I've set up a Steve Jobs: Walter Isaacson discussion group on Linkedin.
Currently I am talking to myself (was it not ever thus).
P.S. My bloods have come but negative, so I feel like taking a cold shower and changing scenes.
Re-reading the Steve Jobs biography with four months in hand before another MAODE module I am struck by what it tells you about Gates and Jobs and how self-evidently one is an adaptor 'doing things better' while the other is an innovator 'doing things differently'.
This drawn from doing a KAI personality inventory and all the reading around these tests for B822.
I came out at 144 on a scale of 160; I'd envisage Jobs as somewhere on the outer edges of 150 while Gates gets a 20 or 30, neither would be in the 60-130 zone for two thirds of respondents.
If they ever did one of these are the results known?
As most managers do observation and experience of a person's behaviour and responses must suffice.
I feel a desire to revisit H807 'Innovations in E-learning' while mixing it up with B822 'Creativity, Innovation and Change'.
I can do this through the 1000+ entries I have here and by refreshing my mind from the current and archived blogs of others blogging here currently (though few if any blog there way through the MBA programme and I am yet to find anyone blogging about B822).
Faced with an exam this is what I do. Here is Block 1, ostensibly Part 1 of a three part examination.
I've grouped sets of ideas and reduced them to a mnemonic or phrase.
These become the 'peg' from which I recreate something not dissimilar to the above on a sheet of Rough Paper.
In practice, never having done an OU exam before, I used an ENTIRE question book, filling it with part 1, part 2, and part 3 doodles and lists such as these.
When I saw the questions I took out a coloured pen, they happened to be red, orange and yellow.
I then circled those chunks of ideas that I planned to use for that question
a) seeing that per question I was essentially sticking to the appropriate block and
b) ensuring that there was no (or mininmal) over lap.
In fact 'SPICES' and 'CHALKPR' (as I rephrased it) cover some of the same ground in defining a creative organisation so I used the first in one question and the latter in another.
Did it work? We'll see.
As for the learning experience?
However much I dislike exams I am reminded of the extraordinary value of having to refresh, consolidate and build your knowledge. It had to stick for a few hours for an exam, but I feel that without the exam I would never have compressed my thinking or seen how many of the ideas are remarkably straightforward.
Were I designing learning I would certainly want an examination during and at the end.
Not just the written paper, but multichoice, open debate, a testing tutorial designed to get the synapses working ... many ways to get students to engage with the cotent and make it their own so that it can be applied and remembered.
Sitting an exam for the first time in 28 years got me thinking how so much is assessed by assignments and 'doing'.
Just clinging to a pen for more than 5 minutes is a novelty to me.
Surely the technology we now have is capable of 'getting into my head' to show that I do or do not know my stuff. But here's the difference, have I been taught to pass an exam which could only prepare me to become an academic, or have I been applied to apply what I have learned which is very different.
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